Medical mission — destination Guatemala

Posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Dr. Philip Johnson, professor of internal medicine, has been going to Guatemala for many, many, many years volunteering in nonmedical situations. Five years ago, he joined forces with an organization called Faith In Practice, which is based here in Houston. The two had one love and one primary goal: Guatemala and providing medical care to the people of Guatemala whose health is poor at best.

Five years ago, Phil and his wife, Linda, began organizing medical teams under the guidance of Faith In Practice. Health care practitioners coming from all over the country joined team Johnson as volunteers to provide medical care to the impoverished of the most remote areas of Guatemala. Twyla Brack, MA (UTPB outpatient Internal Medicine Clinic), and I have consistently attended them. Last year we began recruiting medical students and residents who were not only willing to go and volunteer but use their precious vacation time and the very little money they have to support their trip. The student/resident response has been so overwhelming to our team that we have already begun to establish a waiting list of volunteers for next year!

Once our team arrives in Guatemala City on a Saturday afternoon, we are taken by bus to the capital city of Antigua. Here we gather our week’s worth of medical supplies and prepare for our journey to the needy. We also take this time to tour the base hospital (Obras) and supporting facilities where we refer the most critical of the patients identified in the upcoming week. Sunday is another day of travel. We drive or fly several hours to our base locale for the week and prepare for our first day’s work on Monday. Typically, we spend the first two days working a village that is furthest away from base and then attend closer but different villages the last couple of days. Our clinic settings consist of general medicine, pediatrics, women’s health, and dentistry with a supporting pharmacy and lab. Each are mobile, designed and run by the Johnson team. The students/residents have opportunity to rotate through each unit and participate in the experience each setting has to offer. Every morning we are up by 5 a.m. and rarely get to sleep by midnight. We run on sheer adrenaline, faith, and courage. Team Johnson has been notorious for seeing 2,600+ patients in four days.

The primary goal of the “Village Medicine Team” is to identify patients in need of surgery. Once those are identified, we arrange full support of transport for the patient and a family member so they can obtain the needed service. The surgery and travel expenses are covered for the individual and their family member by Faith In Practice. Our success is allowing those remote villagers of Guatemala to not feel quite so alone or abandoned by the world.

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